The Garrett Wallis House

We have been in planning mode for a few weeks -- we're at a juncture where the messy and satisfying manual labor of demolition is largely complete, and now we need to finalize some of our design and assembly choices that trickle down to influence some of the plumbing and foundation work that we need to do next. The result is that we've been doing a lot of thinking, sketching, researching, and getting input from different friend-experts and contractor-experts -- so we haven't benefited from the endorphins that visible progress provides... ah, well!  We'll share more updates on our process and plans later. In the meantime, we wanted to share a few more artifacts that we found during the demolition process! **** Throughout the house, newspapers had been stuffed into cracks over the years to prevent drafts. The first of the newspapers we found capture one of the most incredible historical moments that we could have imagined -- this paper from April 29, 1939 (just about 5 mo...

Harmony reigns in the Walrett household…perhaps because we are too tired for anything else? You might remember from an earlier picture that during our original demolition blitz we left in the 2 nd floor ceiling lath.   And went to some pains, really, to remove only the plaster, kind of shaving it off with a spade instead of just knocking it all down. So naturally this weekend we took it out.  I climbed up in the attic and knocked most of it down from above to avoid being showered in soot, shingle granules, and yes, the several squirrels who had made a final resting place of our home.  Not technically a code violation, but as a good-faith gesture, we addressed it.  (Sorry for the bad resolution, it was a nasty business and I didn't want to stop for pics.) I had been hoping to avoid this process because the lath was retaining the attic insulation, which no matter how filthy was still insulation, right?   And we could just insulate on top of it to reach our ...